A listening experiment was conducted to determine if a preference exists among three microphone polar patterns when recording height channels for three-dimensional music production. Seven-channel 3D recordings of four different musical instruments were made using five-channel surround microphone arrays, augmented with two Sennheiser MKH 800 Twin microphones as height channels. In a double-blind listening test, subjects were asked to rate different mixes of the same recordings based on preference. The independent variable element in these mixes was the polar pattern of the height channel microphones. Analysis of the results found that the vast majority of subjects showed no statistically significant preference for any one polar pattern.
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